Hello, I'm posting out of desperation to save my Avocado plant, painstakingly grown from pit, which has developed some kind of disease that is causing irregular brown splotches to form on it's leaves. They start small, and eventually grow larger, and end up turning the spot into a burnt dead spot. This happened after I had repotted the plant. The diseased foliage started at the top, and has seemed to work it's way down from there. In an effort to control it (and in wanting to correct some lopsided growth and encourage branching), I had lopped off a good 6 inches or more of the growth from the top that was showing signs of disease. After a few days, the lower leaves began to brown as well. After repotting, I started watering with an insecticidal soap to attempt to control a fungus gnat problem that had been plaguing the plant for some time. My fungus gnat problem mostly went away (I still find some stragglers here and there), but I decided to stop watering the plant with the soap in fear that it was the soap that caused this problem (how toxic IS that stuff? I was under the impression it was fairly safe). I flushed the plant with a lot of water until I could no longer see any soap draining to be sure. I've also began to spray the foliage with a solution of chamomile and baking soda hoping that the problem is fungal, and the remaining foliage continues to degrade but it seems to be spreading much slower than the initial outbreak - so I'm unsure at this point if my spray is controlling it, or what. Here are some pictures taken this morning of the foliage. Hope you can help! Thanks!
It looks like what I'd normally call fertilizer burn, except that you're not fertilizing. So I suspect it was from the soap. My first reaction when my young plants do that is to repot them into a larger pot with completely new soil, and then water with plain water for a while. Avocadoes are such fussy plants when they're young that I'm ususally hesitant to do anything with them beyond a bit of liquid fish now and then, and insecticidal soap foliar sprays when spider mites show up. My first reaction to fungus gnats is to repot; they're so hard to kill without perturbing the plant.
Thanks for your reply. In some ways, I am hoping it was just the soap - at least the solution is to simply keep watering with straight water and wait for new growth. It was stupid of me to use it right after repotting the plant but my fiancee was complaining something fierce about the flies in the livingroom... I am not adding fertilizer, but it was potted in a general purpose potting soil with nutrient balls in there. I've never had a problem with plants burning just from that slow release stuff they put into the soil, though. The plant has pretty much been dormant for the last week since I headed a good 50% of the foliage off of it fearing fungal infection. It is showing signs of life in that dormant buds all over the plant appear to be slightly plumping up so I'm hoping any day now I'll have a lot of new branching (previous attempts to pinch it back kept resulting in continued straight-up growth, so it had to be done anyway regardless of the foliage spotting). I'm not certain just how long is normal for the plant to get it's bearings and start producing new shoots but I don't suppose I should be worried yet. The fact that the leafs, though spotting/burnt are still turgid, means that my root system is still fairly intact. In any case, hoping for the best... I'm kind of attached to this guy.
The plant isn't dormant, it's just "pouting." It's busy growing roots from all the foliage you cut off. After all is said and done, the plant will be happier later. Are you using tap water to water the plant? If so, the salts in the water could be what is causing the burn.
I've always used tap water to water my plants and never had an issue (including this avocado throughout it's life). I'm curious why a plant would need to grow roots if it loses foliage, shouldn't it have an overbalance of roots at that point and focus on growing foliage to match the bottom half?
The plant "thinks" it is in danger, so does what it can to stick around, which would be to grow more roots in hopes of coming back after the foliage is gone.
The tree began to grow out 6 new nodes, 3 of which are growing far faster than the rest and are developing into branches. Curiously these three are near the top where I topped the plant, but there is one additional node which began to grow out and is still plump and green but has seemed to aborted which is above them. The existing foliage continues to crisp up where the original spotting was, but the undamaged parts remain green and overall OK so I have left them on and don't plan on removing the damaged leaves until the new branches have some mature leafs on them. I don't suppose there is any benefit in defoliating the crap leaves off now. Can post pictures of the new growth if anybody is curious, but it looks like the plant is going to make it.
Hello! Not sure if anyone will respond here but I appear to be having a similar issue. The damage on my tree (also grown from a pit) is a bit more extensive. I figure pictures are more important. But did your plant make it? I originally planted it in a giant pot and it was doing fine; only ever watered it (i suspect salt build up?). I also recently got a sun-light which it seems to like, as it is winter, but maybe that's it?
Oh wow! Thanks for the timely response! It's tap water, so minorly chlorinated. That article says it should be ok, but maybe it built up as it was dormant until I just bought the light which we-awakened it. Maybe I wasn't watering it enough to flush out any build up. I just read my water report: says our water is 0.6ppm. The pictures line up better than the salt ones did. I'll try to get some better water and see if that helps. Thank you!
You don't have to seek out better water; all you need to do to dechlorinate is let the water sit in a container for a day or so before watering the plant.
